Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize, Christopher Reid, goes on to claim Costa Book of the Year

A moving series of poems written as a tribute to his late wife this week won Christopher Reid (1968, English) one of Britain’s most important literary prizes, the Costa Book of the Year Award.

Reid is only the fourth poet to win the overall Book of the Year Award, following Douglas Dunn, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Reid’s A Scattering beat Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn; Raphael Selbourne, winner of the prize for best first novel for Beauty, the tale of a young Bangladeshi woman escaping an abusive arranged marriage; Patrick Ness, winner of the children’s category for The Ask and the Answer; and Graham Farmelo for his biography of physicist Paul Dirac.

Quoted in the Guardian, Jonathan Ruppin, of Foyles, said “this collection seems to have struck a chord: his dignity and eloquence puts into words the feelings of anyone who has lost someone dear to them.”